Update for the Vancouver mayoral race: Stewart still ahead, Sylvester on the rise

Advance voting ended tonight for the municipal election in Vancouver. If you haven't voted yet, you'll have to do it this Saturday.

We got two new polls. One from Research Co. and one from One Persuasion. I have never ever heard of this firm. The poll was done online for The Orca. I asked their editor for the pdf of the poll and I got it (thanks!). However, this pdf didn't provide some of the information I was looking for. In particular, it isn't indicated how many respondents were undecided. I sent an email to the firm and I'll keep you updated if they respond. We know the poll had 318 respondents using an online panel. But given that other polls have had between 25 and 40% of undecided (or "don't know" if you prefer), it'd be nice to know how many, out of the 318, were decided voters.

Update: They replied! They said it was 26% undecided. I had assumed them at 25% for this article (kind of at the average of other polls), so we are all good, no need for me to redo the calculations. Still, it means the numbers are ultimately based on around 200 people only...

At least the polls all agree that Kennedy Stewart is ahead. And polls have also agreed that Vancouverites want some chance. Insight West for instance had 69% of people thinking it's time for chance, a proportion not too far from the 81% from One Persuasion. Insight West also showed how many people were undecided and/or were unsure about the candidates with 68% declaring they needed to do more research.

The latest poll from Research Co. shows a progression for Shauna Sylvester and a drop for Hector Bremner. Since One Persuasion had Sylvester 2nd, she seems to be enjoying a little momentum during this last week. Wai Young (former Conservative MP, the only CPC MP in Vancouver in 2011) is shown ahead among people who don't have English as mother tongue and while a victory seems highly unlikely for her, a 4th place finish above 10% is quite possible.

Anyway, here are the latest projections for the mayoral race. If you want more details about the methodology, you can read my previous article here.

Kennedy Stewart remains the big favourite to win this Saturday. Despite few polls (with a ton of undecided), he has been ahead in every single one of them. Also, if you use other measures such as Google Trends or Alexa (to measure the traffic to their website), you also have him ahead.

Nothing is guaranteed as we have fairly limited information but it's pretty clear Stewart is favourite and it'd be a surprise if he didn't win this Saturday. How big of a surprise? Well my model gives him quite good odds but my model also had to "guess" a lot of the uncertainty that exists in this race. I'm simply not as confident about these ranges and probabilities as I'd be for a regular provincial election.

Many variables could change this race, from the number of undecided to the turnout. Let's also remember than Ken Sim can benefit from the electoral machine of the NPA, the party currently polling ahead for the race for the city council. So hopefully I have included enough uncertainty in my simulations!

I'll try to update one last time before Saturday if we get more polls.